What kinds of information can you get when you do legal research?

 **** The information written here is not legal advice and the author of this blog is not your lawyer.  These posts merely contain ideas to help you plan and organize your legal research and identify potentially helpful sources of law. ****

Every branch of the government makes law.  

1. Statutes are written by the legislative branch of government.
2. Cases are decided by the judiciary branch of government.
3. Regulations are made by the executive branch of government.

The notes at the end of each of these blog posts show examples of all of these kinds of law.  Statutes, cases, and regulations are known as “primary law” because they are written by the government. There are also good “secondary” sources that are clearer to read and easier to navigate than the primary sources. It is usually a good idea to begin a legal research project by hunting through the secondary sources and, from those, getting leads for what to seek in the primary law.

Secondary sources include legal encyclopedias such as American Jurisprudence (called “Am Jur”) and Corpus Juris Secundum (known as CJS) which are both organized in alphabetical order by topic, just like most encyclopedias. At the end of each set is an index where researchers can look for a particular word or issue to find out where it fits within the main alphabetical topics of the set. Some states have their own legal encyclopedias. Other commonly used secondary sources are law journals which publish long detailed descriptive articles and have lots of footnotes leading to additional information. At public libraries, law journals might be available in social sciences databases for convenient searching.

It is almost always possible to identify at least one entire book about any legal subject. The public library might not have the particular books you need, but the county law library might have them.  If you cannot get to the county law library, as if your public  library can borrow it from another library which does have it. This procedure is called interlibrary loan. It is a service that public libraries typically provide to patrons with a library card. A homeless patron who, because of the lack of an address, does not have a library card can sometimes arrange an alternative method of obtaining interlibrary loan books though he won’t be able to remove them from the library.

The internet, as is obvious from this blog’s footnotes, has a wealth of freely available legal information. Nearly every state and federal agency, legislature, and court has its own Web site with its laws or case opinions.[i] Law libraries publish helpful online research guides with links to reliable Web sources.[ii] Bar associations and law firms publish authoritative introductions to legal issues.[iii] These types of entities are good sources of legal information. 
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[i] Cornell Legal Information Institute http://www.law.cornell.edu/ and WashLaw Web from Washburn law school http://www.washlaw.edu/ and Justia http://www.justia.com/ are all reliable sources of state and federal law.

[ii] The law librarians’ resource exchange has a good collection of research guides http://llrx.com/. NYU’s research guides are at http://www.law.nyu.edu/library/research/researchguides/index.htm. The Washington State Library has research guides at http://www.courts.wa.gov/library/index.cfm. A terrific non-library site, the University of Pittsburgh’s JURIST has extensive scholarly legal information links organized by topic http://www.jurist.law.pitt.edu/subj_gd.htm.

[iii] The Texas Bar Association provides free pamphlets on a variety of legal issues at http://www.texasbar.com/template.cfm?section=pamphlets. The Michigan Bar’s Online Legal Help Center http://www.michbar.org/generalinfo/libraries/selfhelp.cfm “was created to help Michigan citizens find legal information to help them work better with their attorney, and to represent themselves in some instances.” The Illinois Bar has a Web site called “The Law and You in Illinois” http://www.illinoislawyerfinder.com/publicinfo/home.html which links to useful summaries about all kinds of legal transactions. The Oregon State Bar has explanatory guides at http://www.osbar.org/public/legallinks.html. The State Bar of Nevada has law topic brochures at http://www.nvbar.org/publications/pamphlets.htm. All of the states’ bar associations are accessible by clicking on a state name in Washlaw http://www.washlaw.edu/.

What kinds of legal research sources are jails and prisons required to provide?

**** The information written here is not legal advice and the author of this blog is not your lawyer.  These posts merely contain ideas to help you plan and organize your legal research and identify potentially helpful sources of law. ****

The U.S. Constitution has been understood to say that because people are entitled to represent themselves in criminal court[i] and to have due process in their interactions with the government[ii] they are entitled to legal information sources with which to represent themselves when they are incarcerated.[iii]   The cases explaining why inmates should have access to legal resources do not specify exactly what kinds of resources have to be available. They say that inmates should have “tools” that enable them “to attack their sentences, directly or collaterally, and in order to challenge the conditions of their confinement.”[iv]

While law library access is one helpful tool, the courts more broadly require that somehow the prisons and jails confer “the capability of bringing contemplated challenges to sentences or conditions of confinement before the courts.”[v] When inmates who could not read and did not know English sued a prison for not providing them with this capability, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that a library full of standard English language law books would not make them capable of fighting their convictions or anything about their incarceration.[vi]

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[i] Cases have stated that the Sixth Amendment, providing for a right to counsel, also provides criminal defendants with the choice of representing themselves. Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806 95 S.Ct 2525 (1975). An article showing how this principle has been followed throughout the country is John Herbrand, Accused’s Right to Represent Himself in State Criminal Proceedings, 98 ALR 3d. 13 (1980- updated through 2006).

[ii] Cruz v. Beto 405 U.S. 319 (1972) (about prisoners’ rights to file grievances about prohibitions against their religious practices in prison); Johnson v. Avery 393 U.S. 483 (1969) (about prisoners’ rights to get assistance with legal document preparation from other inmates); Buchalter v. NY, 319 U.S. 427 (1943). (“action by a state through any of its agencies must be consistent with the fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of our civil and political institutions, which not infrequently are designated as the ‘law of the land.’ Where this requirement has been disregarded in a criminal trial in a state court this court has not hesitated to exercise its jurisdiction to enforce the constitutional guarantee.”)

[iii] Cases declaring that jailed criminal defendants have access to law libraries in jail include Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 97 S.Ct. 1491 (1977) and Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 116 S.Ct 2174 (1996). See also William Lindsley, Penal and Correctional Institutions, 60 Am. Jur. 2d §68 (updated through 2007). Section 68 is about “inmates’ access to courts, legal assistance, and materials.”

[iv] Lewis v. Casey at 518 U.S. 355 and 116 S.Ct. 2182.

[v] Id. at 356, 2182.

[vi] Id. 

Where can you go to conduct legal research?

**** The information written here is not legal advice and the author of this blog is not your lawyer.  These posts merely contain ideas to help you plan and organize your legal research and identify potentially helpful sources of law. ****

 

The general answer to this question is, go to the nearest law library. The most likely law library to be accessible to the public is a county law library, but those are usually only located in the county seat. Some law schools allow the public to use their libraries for independent legal research. But because their purpose is to assist faculty and students with serious scholarly research, rather than to help the public with practical case research, they do not always have the kinds of resources that public patrons would want.

Public libraries often have basic state laws as well as small collections of books that are written for non-lawyers to use in handling legal transactions and court cases. If going to the library is impossible, inquire about getting internet access at community centers or social service agencies. We have leads many good internet sources throughout this blog because we anticipate that accessing those is likely to be more convenient than getting access to a thorough collection of law books.